


Planned

by lalaietha



Series: The Apocalypse According to C (with some Help from S and H) [3]
Category: Calvin & Hobbes
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Calvin sees out of the corner of his eye when Susie moves, when she unfolds her legs, puts one foot down to brace herself and leans over, stretching out the full length of her arm to turn down the radio. She waits until he's looking at her, his own mug in hand, before she says, "Okay. Tell me how you knew."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Planned

**Author's Note:**

> Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, written for ~law-nerd

_The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what,  
we must eat to live._

_The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the  
table so it has been since creation, and it will go on._

_We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe  
at the corners. They scrape their knees under it._

_It is here that children are given instructions on what_  
it means to be human. We make men at it,  
we make women. 

_At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts  
of lovers._

_Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms_  
around our children. They laugh with us at our poor  
falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back  
together once again at the table. 

_This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella  
in the sun._

_Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place_  
to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate  
the terrible victory. 

_We have given birth on this table, and have prepared  
our parents for burial here._

_At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow._  
We pray of suffering and remorse.  
We give thanks. 

_Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,_  
while we are laughing and crying,  
eating of the last sweet bite.  
\- Joy Harjo

*****

The radio hasn't been off for hours. Susie turned it on the second Calvin hit the ignition on Old Faithful, the bike hooked on the back and everything settled and secure, and it hasn't really been quiet since.

Just faded a few times, as broadcast headquarters had to move. As places that used to broadcast ceased to exist. As towns and cities died. Calvin's not surprised when, eventually, the broadcast says it's coming out of a "secure location", which probably means nearly the middle of nowhere. 

They made it out. In fact, he and Susie managed everything faster than Calvin expected, be it getting from the campus to Old Faithful to getting Old Faithful out of town. Mostly, that kind of makes him disgusted with emergency preparedness, with the people in charge and the powers that be. Granted that none of what they do is likely to help in the long run, is it still too much to ask that they be on the ball enough to start warning people? To make some kind of correlations, to start an orderly traffic out of town or at least start herding people off the streets to prevent mass panic and exodus? What did society even pay these people for? 

Then he feels shitty for thinking badly of people who'll pretty soon be, well, dead. Like he should have more compassion or more grief about it or both, or something else. Where mostly, he's just nervous. 

Susie hasn't said anything since she turned the radio on, beyond a few fill-the-silence comments about finding a new station when the stream of words from the speakers temporarily died out. And that was only at the beginning. As Calvin kept driving and the news got worse, Susie went totally silent and that's how she has been ever since, one arm wrapped around her and the other hand with a finger at her mouth like she's chewing on her fingernails. 

She isn't. It's just sort of like she might start at any minute. 

Hobbes doesn't say anything either which, as far as Calvin's concerned, is just as well. There's pretty much nothing the tiger could say that would make this better and a lot that he could say or do that would get on Calvin's nerves, which are already jumpy and frayed from worrying about where to go, worrying about running into some kind of block on the way there, worrying about what Susie'll do once they get there and, as an afterthought, worrying about the fact that the world is ending. 

But then, he's known the world was fucking ending for months now, so that worry is kind of familiar. 

In the end, they make the campsite Calvin chose long before he thought they would, if you measure "long" by "an hour or two". It's early enough that they're setting up the campsite while the sun still gives them some dying red-and-gold light, have the fire going good before it gets chill, and have found the portable solar-charge satellite radio (entirely charged in advance) so that they don't have to choose between risking Old Faithful's battery and keeping up with the news. 

The campsite's up a bunch of rural roads and then off-road over tracks that even Old Faithful complained about going up. Calvin figures the chances of anyone trying to get up here for at least a couple days are slim to none, even if anyone else figures out that the only way to survive is going to be making sure they're around fewer other humans than you could pack in a sports stadium and heads off into the wild. And it's not likely they'll figure that out that fast. They don't have Hobbes. 

Calvin brought cold-cut sandwiches with all the fixings for supper, on the basis that they're not going to necessarily get a lot of that and they can break into the tinned and dried shit after the fresh stuff's gone. Susie eats hers mechanically and silently, the same way she helped him set up the camp. She's sitting on a folding camp-chair beside the fire with her legs pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, staring into the flames while the radio tells them all about the death of civilization. 

Hobbes sprawls in the shadow off to the side. The firelight glints off eyes and traces patterns of shadow on black-and-orange fur. The tiger's still not saying anything, but he's a slinked-out pile of deceptive ease: Calvin can feel it, feel the way Hobbes is read to spring and act and probably shout a lot at the slightest reason. But he doesn't say anything. 

According to the radio, North American cities are the worst hit so far; according to the radio, nobody can see a pattern or a reason or has any explanation at all; according to the radio, the president is somewhere hidden and is "enacting a plan". 

The numbers of the dead have long-since passed into the realm of "statistic". Calvin wonders what will happen when he actually understands that, gut-level understands how many people are dead, how much is destroyed. New York is gone. Paris is gone. _Gone_. No buildings standing, no people found alive, just giant piles of rubble useful only as some kind of mine if any society survives that can use the scraps. The Louvre, Notre Dame, the Empire State Building - it's all _gone_. Nobody will ever see it again except in old pictures. 

Not to mention all those people. 

He makes some hot cocoa for something to do (and because the fresh milk will only last so long, even in the wicked-ass coolers he's got) and adds marshmallows. A lot of them, for him, and a few for Susie because she doesn't like as many. He puts her cup down beside her. He thinks about sitting down himself, maybe sitting down with Hobbes, but he's got too much of the H part of his diagnosis right now born of worry and fear and more worry, so instead he putters around the campsite haphazardly and chaotically making sure that everything really is battened down, properly stored, wildlife-safe, all of that. 

Calvin sees out of the corner of his eye when Susie moves, when she unfolds her legs, puts one foot down to brace herself and leans over, stretching out the full length of her arm to turn down the radio. She waits until he's looking at her, his own mug in hand, before she says, "Okay. Tell me how you knew." 

Which has always been coming, and is part of what he's worried about. Calvin looks down at his melting marshmallows and says, "You're not going to like it." 

Hobbes gives a rumble and a snort as if to emphasise that and Calvin shoots him a Look, silently willing the tiger _not to help._ This is going to be hard enough without carrying on a double-conversation and remembering what not to relay. 

"Calvin," Susie says in a low and tired voice, "what the fuck is there about today to like?" 

Calvin sighs and half-sits on the fold-up table he was just cleaning. He rubs the back of his neck and tries to figure out how to do this. "Okay," he says, "look. You have to - " He stops and tries again with, "What I'm about to say is - I mean, for _me_ \- " 

"For fuck's sake," Susie says, closing her eyes, " _just. fucking. tell me._ " 

"Yeah," Calvin says. He taps his fingers against his mug. "The thing is, it's not a joke. Okay? I'm not joking. I'm not fucking with you. It isn't me trying to be funny, or lie, or anything. I'm telling you the truth." 

Susie sits back in her chair and pulls one knee back up, like some kind of armor. "So do it." 

Calvin looks at his tiger. He looks at Susie. He looks at the sky and all the stars he can see, unharmed by the puny light pollution of his fire and the Coleman lantern. 

"Hobbes told me," he says, because even after ages trying, he couldn't find a lie that would make sense. 

She stares at him for a long time. Like she's waiting for him to finish the joke, hit the punch-line, even after everything he said. Then like she's waiting for him to dissolve or something like it. Probably trying to figure out how to test whether this moment is real. 

"Yes," Calvin says, to get it over with. "I'm serious." 

"Your fucking grungy-ass stuffed tiger," Susie says, her voice harsh; Hobbes snorts again, but still keeps his mouth shut and Calvin decides to let the insult slide. 

"Hobbes," he says. "Yeah." 

"You're crazy," Susie tells him, and there's new conviction behind the words, like they're not just hyperbole or metaphor or teasing anymore. "You're fucking out of your mind." 

"Yeah," Calvin says, because it isn't like this is territory he hasn't been over himself. "You have no idea how long I've spent wondering about that. Except that today I'm the crazy person who knew about the end of the world before it happened, Susie." 

"Because a stuffed animal told you," she says, recapitulating it, her voice dull now. 

"Because Hobbes told me," Calvin says, letting the subtle correction stand, not really willing to get into finer nuance while she's still struggling with this much. 

He'd say more, but it's not like there's anything to say. There's nothing that'll make this easier, make it make more sense, or make it less scary for her. There's nothing that makes it less scary for him. It's just how things are, it's just the truth, and he can't do anything about it. 

She'd looked like she wondered, earlier, why he was putting up two tents. And it's mostly so that she can do what she does now, which is stare at him a little longer and then get up, walk to hers and zip the flap closed behind her. Calvin wonders what she'll do, if she'll just throw herself on top of the sleeping pad and sleeping bag and lie there and . . . whatever. 

Probably. 

He sighs one last time and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. They're sore, like he should be crying, which matches up with the tightness in his throat. But neither is bad enough to need to come out yet and besides, he doesn't have time, so he just covers over the last coals of the fire and turns off the Coleman. 

Hobbes gets up and comes over to him, while he sits in the darkness and lets his eyes adjust. There's a moon and enough stars. The tiger puts a paw on his knee and then pads over to their tent. 

When Calvin joins him, with only the mosquito shield zipped for their tent, Hobbes' eyes are still open in the dark. Calvin lies down with his hands behind his head. The radio's still going, quietly. 

There's a gun alongside Calvin's sleeping bag. He's not sure whether or not Susie saw that. 

Into the dark, he says, "It's going to get a lot worse out there before this is over, isn't it." 

Hobbes shifts a little. "I told you," he says. "It's the end of the world."


End file.
